Dec. 2,3, 1899.1 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
503 
"It was a hobliii," explained George, simply meaning, 
presumably, a goblin. 
The Hon. Chauncey returned with a fresh batch of re- 
,^rets; the robust Robert with nothing. 
"Saw three to-day," said the Hon. Chaimcey. "Got 
stage fright and no moose." 
From the hysterical account of himself and Henry, it 
was impossible to draw conclusions. It is not even 
definitely known whether he fired. 
Thus it went on. One afternoon George and I walked 
up the ridge toward camp, George a rod ahead. Three 
hundred yards from the cabin, up jumped two moose. 
"Moose!" hissed George. 
I looked ahead and beheld the old familiar form, the 
great, black bulk, the yellow legs, the wig-wagging ears. 
I looked for horns; there was none. The bulk upheaved! 
waved an airy adieu with the legs, and was gone. It was 
the biggest cow I ever saw. With her was a small bull. 
We followed half a mile till we saw the insignificance nf 
her consort, and returned to camp. The Hon. Chauncey 
was there with his usual tale. 
"Now see here," I remarked, "I'm going out with you 
to-morrow to see what all this means. George can" go 
eastward with Bob. I'm going to try to rub off some of 
your luck." 
"I'd sell it for the price of a stamp," answered the Hon. 
Chauncey, eagerly. 
We set forth just after dawn. At this day most of the 
,snow was gone. But the bare leaves were fairly silent, and 
soft-footed we set out to the scene of adventure. By 
and by we found a track. The Hon. Chauncey was to 
have first shot. We dipped down the ridge, crossed a 
hat, and stole over a little knoll. As we reached the 
crest I looked down into the hollow. 
There was a bull moose making tracks with all- the 
'haste and intelligence that he had been endowed with 
by nature. 
"Shoot!" I yelled to the Hon. Chauncey. He could not 
see the bull. In a brief instant I couldn't either. 
We followed to see what had happened. We found 
that in his flight he had stampeded four other moose. Two 
at lea.st by their tracks were big bulls. 
"Cuss !" said Henry. 
"Cuss I" I echoed. 
We boiled the kettle in a swamp, and climbed anew 
to the ridges. At the top we observed a sable, clinging to 
a fir tree like a rat to a rafter. The Hon. Chauncey de- 
sired to fhoot him with a .45-90, smokeless powder and 
metal patched bullet. Henry and I dissuaded on the 
ground that even if he did hit, he never would know. 
■Neither would the sable, for that matter. I had some 
seven-grain cartridges for the .30-40 I was using. I had 
taken them to try. The Hon. Chauncey tried some after- 
ward. He said one might hit a mountain with them, pro- 
vided one was inside the mountain in a tunnel. After 
considering, he added to the hypothesis the premise that 
the tunnel should be walled in at both ends. He was a 
wag, was Chauncey. 
I fired at the sable three times, and the sable concluded 
to move out of the country. We went with him. Henry 
tried to immolate the beast with his pack. He missed 
with that; then he tried his hat. It was of no avail; the 
hat missed fire. Then he threw his axe, and the sable 
GEORGE AND HUNRY. 
came almost as near to sudden death as the late lamented 
Charles I. After that the sable clambered into a brush 
heap, and there was nothing doing. 
"You're a fine moose hunter, you are," sniffed Henry. 
"Who's moose hunting?" I retorted. "D'you call this 
excursion a hunt?" 
It was all foolish, of course. We went back aild hunted 
up Henry's axe ; then we looked over the country and 
went back to camp. 
The robust Robert returned with a scorn for moose. 
There never was a moose, said he, and he knew he never 
would get one. He said he never could get anything, any- 
how, forgtting that on two occasions he had shot the 
biggest caribou of the 3'ear. I knew the feeling; I had 
had it for about twelve years. 
"George," said I, on the eve of the ninth day, "to- 
morrow is Friday. I never have had any luck killing big 
moose on Friday." 
"Or on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday," cat 
in a mental corrector, "to say nothing of Wednesday and 
Thursday." • ■ ■ . 
But ignoring the inner consciousness, I resumed. 
"I have never had luck on a Friday, and so to-morrow 
we will go to the southwest." 
We went. At dawn we started down the old tote road 
and plunged into a new wilderness. We traveled till 
noon, saw nothing, and returning to the trail, hunted up a 
sprmg and boiled the kettle. 
We ate cold boiled pork and drank tea in silence. Re- 
freshed, we started anew. Half a mile on our way south- 
ward something jumped in the bush. For an instant I saw 
a white flag wave to me from the thicket, , Then I saw 
another. 
"Caribou !" whispered George. 
I looked for horns. There was a prodigious crash, a 
scurry of swift-pounding hoofs— awav went the caribou. 
They had smelled us. Then, for a brief in.stant, I had a 
glimpse of two tremendous caribou bulls, each with a 
gigantic set of horns. The next instant, before the gun 
was upon them, they were gone. 
We stopped and stared at each other. George grabbed 
me by the arm, and helter-skelter we pursued. But they 
had smelled us ; they did not halt. We chased them for 
MR. FOSTER AND HIS MOOSE. 
perhaps 300 yards. George said it was about that. When 
I arrived at the end of it, I differed with him. I thought 
it was 3,000 parasangs. • Maybe it was only 4,000 — I do 
not recollect. 
At this point, please notice I did not shoot those cari- 
bou. Till time immemorial, I will ever offer thanksgiving 
that I did not. I am still w^ondering why this was not 
included in the President's proclamaton. 
Had I shot those caribou, I could not have shot my 
moose. 
I have requeste'd th'fe editor- to set this line in poster 
type, printed in red ink with a handful of asterisks, ex- 
clamation points and stars at the end of it. It is im- 
portant. 
Sadly we retraced our steps. 
"George," I remarked, "you're a bunco." 
"You're a hoodoo," he returned. • 
"Do you think we'll ever see the big moose, George?" 
"Dear knows." 
• I knew George to be a thoughtful, discerning person. 
Once I was sitting upon a log with him in the dim closes 
of a forest aisle, when I saw his eye roam aloft. He was 
not communing with the heavens, nor yet was he engaged 
in weather observations. He was looking, instead, at a 
woodoecker. By and by he spoke. 
"There's many a fool in the World'," said he. "Loolc 
there at that bird. See him sitting up there on a hard, 
dry stub, pecking and pecking away, beating his ever- 
lasting, blasted, goldarned brains put for one meeserable 
dodgasted little worm." 
Thus I knew George to be observing, and the parab'c of 
the woodpecker and the worm returned with sudden 
vividness when he said, "Dear knows." 
"Anyhow," he added, "I'm going to get a partridge." 
With that he leaned down and picked up a boulder ly ng 
in the roots of an nptnrned tree. First partridge I see." 
he added, with sudden emphasis. "I'll knock its billv-b?- 
goidarned head off." 
We walked along the trail, homeward. George had his 
rock readis whereas I hunted moose. After twelve years' 
experience I could not walk through the woods without 
looking for that monster bull. So we stole along softly. 
George for his partridge, I for my moose. Years ago, in 
reading Van Dyck's "Still-Hunter," I came across a pas- 
sage that has ever been fixed in my mind. Its gist was 
nil despcraiidum. It was a hint to hunt to .the last, till 
the gun was in its case, till the woods were left behind for 
■ town, and the solitude only a memory. Therefore I 
hunted. 
We came back to where we had boiled the kettle, 
climbed the ridge and plunged down the other side. Be- 
yond was a little valley, holding in its hollow a swale 
fringed Avith a growth of birch poles and roundwood. 
George still looked for his partridge. 
Crash! What happened thereafter is the truth, solid 
and unimpeachable. 
I looked over my right shoulder, swinging the rifle to 
ready as I wheeled. George jumped out of range. To- 
gether we peered into the thicket, and a black colossus 
arose before our views. I saw its shadowy bulk through 
the thicket of poles. For an instant I could see no more. 
Then the glint of yellow horns caught my eye. I saw 
they were broad; I saw it was a big moose. But how 
big I had but a vague idea. 
George saw and heeded. As the moose turned to 
run. he caught a full view of the antlers. A frenzy shook 
him at the sight. He was transformed into a very genius 
of madness; I saw,- in a- glance, liis- eyes start out, and his 
mouth open. 
"Horns !" he yelled. "Horns^sh^pdt !" , 
The crack of the rifle had if^t'hitn short; the moose 
had started. He was then, peph^ps,' 80 yards away, I 
heard the crashing of his horns, upon the trees, saw his 
form vaguely as he plunged through the tangle, and at 
every glimpse I fired, , 
George had run two rods up the trail. He was waving 
his arms, shrieking an muntelligible bedlam of direction'; 
his hat was off, and h© leaped up and down in strenuous 
excitement. 
"Give it to him !" he screamed. 
I recollect looking along the barrel and turning the 
magazine loose. I knew dimly that it was the big one 
at last, but how big I could not guess — 4 feet, perhaps. 
I could see the tips of the horns, and they were my 
guide. I held diagonally down from them, searching for 
the fore shoulder. The rifle fairly rattled, I recollect 
once firing nme times at a deer while he was crossing 
50 yards of open ground. But at that moose I broke all 
records hollow. As fast as I could work the finger lever 
and drop the sights into alignment I fired. George still 
flourished his arms. 
''Here! here!" he shrieked. "I can see him him." 
"So can J I" — bang! 
Then — click — ^the hammer fell with no answering de- 
tonation. The last shell was gone. While I had been 
pouring lead through the thicket, I had been singing an 
anthem to myself, an anthem that rang uproariously 
like a Wagnerian chorus above the staccato crack of the 
Winchester— "Why don't I knock him down? Why 
don't I knock him down?" 
The magazine was empty. I thrust a hahd- into niy 
trousers pocket and clutched a handfifl of cartridges. In 
my frantic haste all but two fell upon the ground. The 
remaining two I jammed into the receiver' and snapped 
the breechblock home. By pure good fortune, a shell 
pushed into lhe chamber. At that instant 1 saw the 
plunging colossus take one stride across a windfall fully 
5 ieet high. He went over it unchecked as casually as a 
poodle would walk over a match. I had a plain view of 
his shoulder, and held the ivory bead full upon the black 
hide. 
An upheaval followed the shot. I saw the big bull 
collapse. His hind legs flew up into the air; they wavered 
to and fro as he struggled across the tree trunk, and 
I let drive again. Then I could see nothing more. 
There was a moment's silence. My ears roared like 
voices in a swound. 
"He's down! He's down!" screamed George. 
He snatched up his hat and threw it down again. I 
ran toward him, and together we dashed toward the 
thicket. A mon.ster head, crowned with branching horns, 
tipreared beside the windfall. It was the bull making his 
last .fight. He was turned toward us, vainly striving 
to rise. I rushed down upon him, and George yelled 
a warning. I jumped just in time, as the antler swung 
past my knee. But I M^as ready even then to jump on 
that moose and hold him down if he tried to run away. 
But his running was over. He swayed back, and the 
struggle passed. He was still, his .great head resting on 
the windfall, his horns resting back above his shoulder. 
"Whoop!" yelled George. "Hurray! Look at those 
horns!" 
I looked, and was aghast. I saw their spread as in a 
dream. I beheld their weight, and I — I hope you will 
pardon me. It took me twelve years to get to see what I 
saw. 
George jumped up on the moose, cut a pigeon wing 
TOTING OUT. 
and fell oft" to embrace me about the neck. Then he 
pump-handled me as if I were a blushing bridegroom 
or a Congressman with post offices. 
George left me. He leaped into the air and cracked 
his heels together. 
"Biggest I ever saw," he cried. "I wish my wife 
was here to see 'im." Then he whooped again. 
"Look at the bell — holy thunder!" George didn't 
exactly say "holy thunder!" What he said sounded 
louder. I looked at the bell. It was black, glossy as 
silk and fully 18 inches long. I have seen many moose, 
but never one at his age with a beh as long as this. 
"And his ears!" yelled George. But, in truth, they 
were not beautiful. One was split half-way down to the 
butt; the other a finger's length. Moreover, his fore- 
head was cut and slashed as if he had been tilting a mow- 
ing machine. Many of the scars were fresh— still un- 
healed, in fact. 
"I'm going to measure those horns right away," said 
Geor,ge. "How much do you think they'll spread.?' 
"Five feet," I answered. 
"Seven," said he, promptly. He fished into his pocket 
till he found a sulphur match.- "It's just 2 inches lone 
that match. All of 'em are." 
With the match we made a foot rule out of a round- 
wood stem. Then George cut a pole with his axe and 
